The present invention relates to a modular control apparatus for the automated control of a technical installation.
A control apparatus in terms of the present invention can be, for example, a modular control apparatus such as, for example, it is marketed by the applicant of the present invention under the trade name PNOZ® or a programmable controller such as, for example, it is marketed by the applicant of the present invention under the trade name PSS®, or controllers similar to these.
In particular, applicant's PSSuniversal® provides a modular programmable control apparatus for standard and safety tasks, as described by the system description “Pilz, PSSuniversal, Programmable Control Systems PSS®, System Description, No. 21256-EN-04”. In this case, a module comprises a first module part in the form of an electronics module part and a second module part in the form of a basic module part, also referred to as bus module part in the following. The electronics module part is plugged onto the bus module part by virtue of a linear movement.
The electronics module part in this system has two different designs. In a first design, the electronics module part can be an input/output module part (for example for failsafe (FS) or standard (ST) applications). In a second design, the electronics module part can be a voltage supply module part, also referred to as feed module, for feeding a module supply, i.e. an internal supply voltage, or for feeding a periphery supply, i.e. an external supply voltage. It is thus possible for a plurality of voltage groups to be formed. For the first design (input/output module part), a corresponding bus module part is used which has bus connectors in both directions (towards the right and towards the left) of the longitudinal direction in order to connect the supply voltage from the module adjacent on the left-hand side onto the module adjacent on the right-hand side. This design is therefore also referred to as a design with connected bus. For the second design (voltage supply module part), a special bus module part is required which does not have a connection to the supply voltage bus in a first direction (for example towards the left) and has a connection to the supply voltage bus in the other direction (for example towards the right) in order to pass on the supply voltage only to the modules adjacent on the right-hand side. That is to say that, when forming a new voltage group, the connection on the supply voltage bus needs to be interrupted by a suitable bus module part. Therefore, this design is also referred to as the design with interrupted bus. Accordingly, two designs of the second module part (bus module part) have to be provided, firstly with connected bus and secondly with interrupted bus.
A control apparatus comprising a module with three module parts is known, for example, from the X20 system by B&R, as described in the system description “X20-System, User's Manual, Version: 2.10 (May 2009), Model number: MAX20-ENG”. In this case, a module comprises a first module part in the form of an electronics module part, a second module part in the form of a bus module part and a third module part in the form of a field terminal module part, also referred to as connection module part. The external connections in this system are accommodated in a separate connection module part.
In this system, too, the bus module part has two designs: a first design with a connected-through supply (referred to by X20BM11) and a second design with interruption of the supply in one direction (referred to by X20BM01). The latter design is used for connection to corresponding voltage supply module parts. As a result, different voltage groups can also be formed in this system.
A problem with such control apparatuses lies in the fact that a special design of the bus module part is necessary for a corresponding voltage supply module part. This increases the production costs and it may be complicated for the user to correctly assemble the appropriate designs of the module parts.